Susan McKECHNIE

China Girl

if her skin is perfect the world is perfect
the world sits in her cheek, baptize the world it
is a porcelain world with cut off lips and feet and
even its throat is shallow

her skin is white she's white like
we want her for the perfect longitude,
bring her up to the color of dice she won't
notice a loss of animation she's a good girl
and we've made her very very good

bring her up to lights and a little picture
of a camera that disintegrates her fathomless
heart at a rate parallel to the dissection of dust

don't let her hold your hand she might delineate
you might abduct the pulsing part the eighty times
a minute you revert entirely to life

you forgot her little pick-pocket the eclipse she
keeps like a pet and she'll sleep next to you with
the lights on with an anecdote and the walls will
race through her veins

if her skin is white she's a killer and the map
that leads to her is dead, you only pictured yourself
caressing her because you lacked dimension and her
mouth was perfect and you couldn't copulate sparks

map it out with her leftover pores and hairs,
she had good skin they told her that the first take
they told her her color matched the schedule of
desire the calculated pitch of decay

* the title of this poem was taken from the film industry standard
image of a white girl of "perfect" skin tone that color timers use
in the academy leader to match-up color in making a print from a
reel of negative.